How bad is the job market?

The job market is rapidly deteriorating to a historic degree. To put it into context, the amount of benefit claims filed over the last few weeks is higher than the Great Recession of 2009.

The job market is rapidly deteriorating to a historic degree. Associate Professor of Economics Alex Bick and Assistant Professor of Economics Adam Blandin of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business designed a survey to collect U.S. labor market statistics more often.

In this story published April 30, 2020, in The National Review:

The most recent government data are for mid-March, and report a 73% employment rate for 18- to 64-year-olds. As of mid-April, according to the Bick and Blandin survey, this rate dropped to 56%. That 23% decline marks the lowest employment rate for the U.S. since 1962.